Australia-Japan military ties are a 'quasi-alliance', say officials

Military ties between Australia and Japan have been growing so fast that they amount to a "quasi-alliance", according to Japanese officials.

Ties have expanding so rapidly that each country had become the other's most important defence partner behind the United States, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Tony Abbott with Japanese PM Shinzo Abe in Parliament House in July. Credit:AFP

Another official, Takuma Kajita, principal deputy director of the National Security Policy Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in an interview that an unprecedented decision this month to explore the possibility of jointly developing Japan's coveted submarine technology showed the "two countries would be tied up in the most important area of security".

He said this and other recent moves, including the sharing of Australian space surveillance intelligence (which could potentially be linked to ballistic missile defence systems) reflected years of bipartisan commitment, recent challenges from China and also a close personal rapport between prime ministers Tony Abbott and Shinzo Abe.

Advertisement

"Mr Abe wants to raise the relationship between Japan and Australia considerably, his instructions are very clear, and he wants good trilateral relations between Japan, Australia and the US," said Mr Kajita.

A unique "Australia-Japan Defence Co-operation Office" was established within Japan's Ministry of Defence on April 1 this year in order to handle the rapid escalation of activity.

Publicly, especially in Australia, officials have been circumspect about the pace of change in part to avoid triggering an escalatory response from China.

Officials say there are no plans to progress the relationship into a formal treaty that would include reciprocal obligations to defend each other in the event of war.

And Japan is constrained by a sceptical population and pacifist constitution imposed in the wake of World War II that, among other things, requires its armed forces to operate as the Japanese Self-Defence Forces.

But some analysts warn that the Australian public has not yet grasped the dimensions and implications of deepening military ties, including the possibility of being drawn into armed conflict over the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu in Chinese) in the East China Sea.

"The dual-tightening of Australia's alliance with the US and its defence partnership with Japan is the most important strategic decision that Australia has made in the post-cold war era," said Malcolm Cook, a regional security expert at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian studies.

"If there is fighting in the East China Sea then the US will be drawn in. And can you imagine the pressure for Australia to become involved?"

Japanese sources say that the two most dangerous incidents occurred just months ago, in May and June, when Chinese fighter planes used provocative measures including firing afterburners to intercept Japanese surveillance planes at a time of Sino-Russian

But the temperature has cooled considerably since then.

A high-level maritime co-operation forum resumed on September 25, after a 28-month interregnum. And what had been almost daily Chinese maritime incursions into Japanese-controlled waters have dropped substantially in frequency and intensity.

"Chinese ships now enter Japanese territorial waters every two weeks, for exactly two hours," said one Japanese official who was present at the maritime meeting. "It used to be four, six or even eight ships but now it is only three or four," said the official, while noting that Chinese activities in the "contiguous zone" had not diminished at all.

Japanese officials say the continuing incursions are "unacceptable" but nevertheless the atmosphere had become conducive to a first meeting between Mr Abe and China's President Xi jinping on the sidelines of next month's APEC meeting in Shanghai.

The new Australia liaison office in Tokyo illustrates how Australia has leapfrogged all nations except the US in Japanese military thinking.

South Korea was listed as Japan's second most important military partner in a strategy document released less than a year ago, but those ties have cooled due to disagreements over the memory of World War II.

John Garnaut is Fairfax Media's Asia Pacific editor. Most recently he was China correspondent. John graduated in law and arts from Monash University and worked for three years as a commercial lawyer at Melbourne firm Hall & Wilcox before joining the Sydney Morning Herald as a cadet in 2002. He became the Economics Correspondent in the Canberra press gallery and in 2007 was posted to Beijing.